Children of the Machine

Oil Diver

Category:

transport/conveyance

Description:

AERIALSKIFF (ARTIFACT ••••)
Repair: 5
The largest free-moving transport vehicles in all of
Autochthonia, an aerial skiff resembles a large shaft speeder, being twice as long and having arrays of yard-long horizontal tubes lined with Essence panels that run along the underside of the craft. It also sports eight shield-like guidance panels held by two-foot struts that stick out from the sides of the craft. The panels are equipped with force projectors that keep the transport from slamming into the walls of the tunnels as it travels throughout the body of the Machine God. These lift and propulsion systems glow with a soft blue light and project enough of a distortion field that all objects that are not made of the magical materials or anchored down are blown away from the vehicle up to a distance of 20 yards. Beings within this range suffer automatic knock-back (see Exalted, p. 153), which can be resisted normally. These vehicles also have a large forward mounted essence cannon(Wonders of the Lost Age pg.131) that is used primarily for defense against the dangers of the Reaches.

An exotic variant of the aerial skiff is the oil diver, which is fully enclosed, airtight and pressurized to withstand the crushing depths of the Elemental Pole of Oil but lacks the external guidance panels. These vehicles naturally float in the oil and contain enough air in the cabin for a full complement of passengers to breathe for up to four hours. They are equipped with dorsally mounted airlock hatches and echolocation devices that emit pulses that can read the oily environment up to a distance of half a mile in every direction. Running silent decreases the “visibility” down to 50 yards. Since sight would be completely useless within the Elemental Pole of Oil, these vehicles have a crystal display panel mounted in front of the pilot that projects an insubstantial map in the air before it, shaped from solid-looking light. The map provides for visual interpretation of the information gathered by the echolocation devices and the craft’s natural sensory equipment.